


Acid

by Basingstoke, PoppyAlexander



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sherlock (TV), Torchwood
Genre: BAMF John, Collaboration, Crossover, Fragile Sherlock, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 16:14:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1272874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basingstoke/pseuds/Basingstoke, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some wounds don't heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acid

**Author's Note:**

> Note from PoppyAlexander to my "irregular regular" readers. . .This story is not about "my" Sherlock and John (as portrayed in every other Sherlock story I've written; if you've been with me a while, you know them well). Buckle up and hang on! xoxo

*

John Watson met Sherlock Holmes in the medical library at St Bart's; a day later, he'd met one policeman and six homeless people ("Less citric acid," he advised the junkie. "Honestly, what doesn't dissolve is talc; you're just hurting yourself.") and been kidnapped.

"Oh," Sherlock said. "A taxi driver. Perfect killer."

John sat, annoyed, with his mouth taped shut, and watched Sherlock and their cabbie stare at each other. "Choose," the cabbie said.

"No. Can't be arsed. The gun's a fake, John," Sherlock said, and stood.

John made a disgusted noise and stood as well. He dialed 999 and handed the phone to Sherlock. Then he started working the tape off his mouth without ripping the stubble from his face as well.

"You'll never know if you could beat me!" the cabbie shouted.

"Don't care," Sherlock said. He gave the operator their location. "And we have a murderer here, so quickly, if you please," he told the operator.

"You'll never know who was behind this," the cabbie said.

"Honestly don't care. Not part of my work."

The cabbie smiled. "Are you sure? I've seen a lot of doctors." Sherlock straightened up. "Too late, Mr Holmes," the cabbie said.

Sherlock hissed and raised John's phone as if to throw it. John caught his hand. And the cabbie took both pills and died as the police arrived.

They got a ride home in the back of a police car. Sherlock drew his knees up on the seat and stared at John vacantly. "What is your work?" John asked. "You're not police--"

"Certainly not. He'd never pass the psych," said the driver. Donovan, Lestrade had said, though John hadn't been formally introduced.

"But Lestrade asked him to come to the scene," John said.

"Did he? So sorry he couldn't make it," Donovan said.

Sherlock looked away. "Solving crime is my work." A lie. "It's something I have to do."

"Yes, what exactly are you working off?" Donovan asked. "My money is on interfering with a corpse, but Anderson thinks drugs."

Sherlock didn't answer; didn't speak as they arrived at Baker Street; didn't speak until he unlocked the door. "Oh," he said then. "I suppose you aren't moving in." He still seemed far away. He wouldn't look at John.

"Do you do drugs?" John asked.

"No," Sherlock said, whipping his head around and staring at John. "No."

John believed him. There was an edge to his voice--"Not any more?" he asked.

"Not any more. I don't even smoke. I hit my bottom, believe me," Sherlock said. There was something wild in his eyes.

"Of course I'm moving in."

"Oh." Sherlock looked down at his hand. "I'll fetch your keys, then." He opened the door.

"But I would like to know what your work is."

Sherlock climbed the stairs and didn't answer.

*

John was not allowed in Sherlock's bedroom, not for life or death, not for love or money. He gave in the first day, peeked through the keyhole, but couldn't see anything.

Apart from that, the flat was his. Sherlock didn't have any furniture, decoration, anything; he kept all his possessions in his room. "I thought I would go down to Oxfam. We need lamps," John said.

"Do we?" Sherlock had emerged from his room for tea. John gestured to the empty sitting room--sofa, two chairs, one end table--but Sherlock didn't seem to register the echo. John had retrieved his books from storage, but that was just one box.

"And we should get some food in. What do you like?"

"I'm vegetarian." Sherlock stirred his tea, looking absent again. "And I'm not keen on... by-products. Eggs. Milk. Or fake meat. Vegetables are good. And bread."

"Oh, all right. Vegetables and bread. Beans?"

"Beans are good."

He didn't know why he volunteered to do the shopping, except that Sherlock didn't seem like the shopping type. "If I have meat, is that all right?"

"If I don't have to look at it."

"Right. No bloody, raw steaks."

Sherlock grimaced. "No." And he retreated back to his room, and John didn't see him for two days. Heard him use the bathroom, heard him make toast, but didn't see him. When he knocked on Sherlock's door to get money for his share of groceries, Sherlock slid his bank card under the door wordlessly.

Well, it wasn't like he didn't know Sherlock was a weird bloke when he moved in. Honestly, he moved in because of it.

*

And then two weeks later, Sherlock left the flat for two days and returned with windburn and a large box. After that, he started sleeping on the sofa.

"Sherlock," John asked.

Sherlock didn't look up from his computer, but John could tell he was listening by the set of his shoulders.

"Did you fill your room?" John asked.

Sherlock looked annoyed. He glanced over at John.

"You can spread out. The flat is half yours. There's an entire bookshelf sitting bare."

"I don't want you in my work."

"I helped you before," John said.

"With the crime solving, yes, fine, whenever you like."

"And--" But Sherlock started to shut down, so John paused. "Anyway, I need to do laundry; will you carry the basket for me?"

Sherlock nodded. John leaned on his cane and stood. "Why do you use that cane, anyway?" Sherlock asked.

"I was shot," John said.

"In the shoulder," Sherlock said.

John ran his tongue over the inside of his teeth. "Tell me what your work is and I'll tell you why my limp is," he said.

Sherlock didn't speak.

"Laundry," John said, limping up to his room.

*

Sherlock filled the spare bookshelf with books on astronomy, physics, English history from Cro-Magnon to Winston Churchill, and the other half of John's bookshelf with, oddly, photographic albums, and then started sleeping in his room again. John sneaked a peek at one of the albums and found it full of pictures of Cardiff. Not the nice sections, either. Mostly Splott. A few tourist shots of the Millennium Centre.

He browsed through a few of the physics books but the notes were all in math.

In the history books, large sections were crossed out angrily, often so deeply that the pages tore. Apparently the Roman occupation of England made Sherlock hopping mad.

"My flatmate is exceedingly strange," John wrote on his blog. "But I like it."

The next morning, he found a note on his keyboard:  _Please don't write about me. I require zero internet presence._  And his blog entry was erased as if it had never been.

*

"Give me your arm," John said.

Sherlock looked up from his computer. There was a plate of celery and bread beside him. "Why?"

"So that I can test you for anemia. You're looking pale."

"I'm English."

"Paler than English."

"No," Sherlock said.

"I'm a doctor. What a prat I would look if my flatmate had a treatable condition."

"Your social standing isn't my concern."

"Don't tell me you're afraid of needles," John said.

Sherlock shut his mouth. And John remembered. Oops.

Sherlock unbuttoned his cuff. "No," he said. He folded his cuff back and John saw the track marks, lurid pink on pale skin. They started on the back of his hand, John saw. He hadn't registered them as track marks. Back of the hand, up over the veins of the back of his wrist, and up the veins on the inside of the arm. Hundreds of marks. Old, not fresh, but not old enough to fade to white. A couple of years, John thought.

"Test me for whatever you can think of," Sherlock said. "I don't think I have any diseases, but it occurs to me I haven't been checked."

John nodded. He supposed he should feel a stab of fear at that, but he hadn't shared any bodily fluids with his flatmate, so there was no risk. He filled two syringes. Sherlock's veins were healthy and it was no trouble at all. "What did you take?" he asked.

"Everything," Sherlock said.

Sherlock came back clean of disease, except, as John suspected, anemia. John prescribed more beans, less celery.

*

Sherlock's wifi router was in his room, and he not infrequently turned it off entirely. John gave up and started leeching off their neighbors (network name: xxxRonxDavexxx, while Sherlock preferred the more prosaic Network011) until one knocked on his door a few months after they moved in.

"Sorry," John said. "My flatmate keeps turning ours off. Cup of tea?"

*

John started to learn Sherlock's moods. After he took a case, he was quieter, withdrawn. When he turned the internet off, he was keyed up, nervous. When he sat in the sitting room and stared out the window, he was contemplative, and would have a conversation. "So--you don't get paid for the police work; do you get paid for your real work?" John asked.

"No. Quite the reverse."

"Then how do you make the rent?"

"Oh. Prostitution."

John choked on his tea and Sherlock turned away from the window and smiled. "I have a trust fund," he said.

John coughed and thumped his chest. "That was unkind," he said.

"My parents had money. I used to have money."

"Spent it on drugs?" John asked.

"It's mostly gone, but I have enough principal to pay the rent from the interest. Don't worry."

"Have you thought about private detective work? Finding cats and husbands?"

"Don't have time," Sherlock said.

He was the oddest flatmate John had ever had, but John was becoming rather fond regardless.

*

John wasn't above internet pornography. In front of it, actually, trying to wank himself to sleep, when the image stuttered and died because Sherlock had turned the bloody internet off again, and that was that. John zipped up (couldn't finish, too angry) and stormed across the hall to pound on Sherlock's door with his cane. "Oi! I pay half that bill!"

"My work is more important than your penis!"

John flushed and tried the handle; locked. "I've had enough! Turn it back on!"

"No!"

John took his shoulder to the door and, to his surprise, it gave. He stumbled into Sherlock's room in a flurry of newspaper clippings and righteous indignation. He hung from the door, trying to right himself.

Sherlock's room....

Madness, John thought at first, and then hoarding, and then he recognized the theme as Sherlock grabbed him by the collar and tossed him into the hallway. Fire hazard, he thought, leaning against the wall, catching his breath. Sherlock slammed the door and jammed something into the cracks.

Sherlock's room was papered in newspaper and printouts. He had a line along the wall over his computer desk of eleven faces plastered with notes. Another wall was taken up with shelves filled with various artifacts, bits of rock, old weapons, what looked like a metal plunger. The rest of the room was taken up with boxes and books and reams and reams of notes and notebooks with a path from desk to bed.

John crossed the hall again and knocked. "Sherlock." No answer, but he hadn't expected one. "You could have told me you were a Doctor-spotter. I had a mate in university into that."

No answer.

He didn't speak to Sherlock for a week.

*

He would have been nervous about Sherlock's well-being, except that food disappeared from the kitchen while he was at work and he could hear Sherlock moving around or typing if he pressed his ear to the door. When he finally saw Sherlock again, it was by accident; he came home from work early and surprised Sherlock coming out of the bathroom in his dressing gown.

Sherlock blushed angrily. He tried to shoulder past John but John caught his arm. "Mate! Come on."

"I am not your mate," Sherlock said. The dressing gown slipped away from his bare chest but John kept his eyes on Sherlock's face, trying to prove a point.

"I get it," John said. "The mystery. It's a classic, all right? Arthur Conan Doyle and Marlowe and Warhol. _‘If that’s all there is, then let’s keep dancing.’_ Right?”

Sherlock looked at him as if he had just started speaking in tongues. “It’s an old song lyric,” he explained. “All I mean is that the search for what else is Out There—“ he pointed vaguely toward a window, and up—“Is nothing new. You don't have to hide it. I could even help. I'm a doctor; I'm good at problem-solving."

Sherlock shook his head and stalked away.

Later, though, fully dressed (with necktie, which he wore when he was feeling especially beleaguered), Sherlock came down and sat in the armchair across from him. "You know what my work is. Our agreement was that you tell me why you have a limp."

"But you didn't tell me, did you? I found out. No deal."

Sherlock lifted his chin. "I thought you were trying to build trust with that speech earlier."

"Your secret isn't much."

"And yours is?"

John smiled, tight-lipped, and marked his place in his book, and went to bed.

*

He woke up with someone on top of him. He punched out with his strong left and caught Sherlock in the chest, making him gasp.

Sherlock fell off the bed. John rolled over and snapped the light on. Sherlock lay on the floor, clutching both hands to his sternum, grimacing in more pain than he really should be feeling. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" John shouted.

Sherlock rolled over, letting out a small whine.

"Sherlock?" John slid out of bed. He pried Sherlock's hands away from his chest, ripped his shirt open, and found a large bandage on Sherlock's chest.

Sherlock panted under his hands. "Sorry," John said. Sherlock shook him off and rolled back over onto his side, facing away.

That was about when John realized he was nude. He looked for his dressing gown. "I should look at that," John said as he tied the garment on.

"No," Sherlock said. "You can't make it any better or worse than it is." He let his breath out. "You don't have a mark on your leg."

"No." He knelt, awkwardly, on the floor next to Sherlock, who was still writhing.

"You found me out. I thought I might find you out. But you have very unfortunate aim."

"Let me see," John asked.

Sherlock shook his head. He pushed himself to sitting, then stood. He offered John a hand up, which John took, balancing on his good leg. Sherlock retreated to his own room and John returned to bed and didn't sleep.

*

But Sherlock took him along next time he went Doctor-spotting. It was an easy trip, as such trips went, just out to the Canary Wharf disaster site. "Tell me the story," John said. "You don't buy the story as reported in the newspapers, right?"

Sherlock wrinkled his nose. "This was the site of the Torchwood Institute," he said.

"Secret official Doctor-spotting government organization. See, I know this."

"Doctor-hunting," Sherlock corrected.

"Right."

"Do you remember the ghosts? Tell me you remember."

"Afghanistan," John said, and Sherlock snarled. "But I heard--"

"For God's sake, don't remind me of the official story. People were seeing beings crossing dimensions and could somehow be convinced they were experiencing a mass hallucination! Same with the Christmas star, same with the blood zombification! Same with the Earth being moved from one galaxy to another--don't you dare look at me tolerantly," Sherlock said. His face hardened.

"I'm not. This is just my face."

"Come on." Sherlock whirled and stalked down the construction scaffolding into the demolition site, leaving John to catch up as best he could. John found him halfway under a girder, scratching at something with a knife. "I've been working on this whenever I can."

"It occurs to me this is extremely illegal," John said.

"Yes, but not dangerous. They already removed everything important. The real proof. This is just to prove to you. Hold this," and he handed up a metal conduit.

It felt strange when John held it. Warm. Slimy, almost, except that there was nothing on it, it was a quality of the thing itself.

"Pull," Sherlock said, and John pulled, and the conduit came away from the girder.

"What am I holding?"

"Part of an alien machine." Sherlock slid out from under the wreckage. "Coil it up."

John did, and it coiled far tighter than it seemed it should. All the properties were just off. John twisted it into a ringlet and it kept its shape, then into a straight line and it held that as well. "Do you know what it does?"

"Suspicions. No proof. I'm not telling you until you stop thinking I'm mad," Sherlock said.

"I don't," John said, but Sherlock just sniffed.

*

Sherlock showed him the collection. John went straight for the plunger. "Gloves!" Sherlock snapped.

John raised his eyebrows. Sherlock slapped latex gloves against his chest. "I think it's dead, but I'm not positive," Sherlock said.

"Oh," John said.

*

"What is it?" John asked.

Sherlock stared at it fervently, running his fingertips over the top. "Come on. I need a witness," he said.

Then they were off. Sherlock hid the thing in a messenger bag and led John to Montagu Street, to a dingy little flat. "What's here? Tell me, you bastard, so I know what I'm looking at," John said.

"It's my old flat. What you're looking for will be perfectly obvious if it works." He picked the lock. John didn't even bother giving him an earful about the law.

The flat was dark but clearly occupied. "Quickly," John growled.

"This is important. Vital. Shut up." Sherlock started fiddling with the machine.

And then John saw someone walk through him. He yelped.

"Hologram," Sherlock said. "Ssh!"

The air flickered around him and blinked. The furniture of the flat was overlaid by a familiar clutter. Sherlock's things, and among them, an image of Sherlock. "It works," Sherlock breathed. The image flickered again; the clutter changed, fewer notebooks and more books. A chemistry lab in one corner. John saw an image of Sherlock at the desk, smoking. This must be the mysterious time Before, then.

"Too early," Sherlock muttered. "How--oh, the colors." He reset the image. The image of himself moved to lie on the floor with his feet up on the wall, again smoking. Sherlock walked though the image and peered at the computer. "Right day," he said.

The image went into fast motion, Sherlock smoking like a Benny Hill sketch. Then the image of Sherlock got up and wrapped a scarf around two legs of the desk and strangled himself--suicide attempt? John thought, shocked. Was this what had changed Sherlock? But no, it wasn't suicide--he was wanking himself. He tightened the scarf and came, banging his head against the desk, and then it was over before John could gather a lecture. "Sherlock!"

"I don't do that anymore."

"That is bloody dangerous!" But now the image of Sherlock was tying off and shooting up. Christ.

But--this was strange. The image of Sherlock was in a T-shirt and he couldn't see track marks. Once the image nodded off and stopped moving, it was very clear and John was sure.

Sherlock watched the image impassively, clearly waiting for something, not reacting to his long-ago one-person orgy.

The image stood up, shook, and fell over. Sherlock exclaimed and backed the machine up. He watched it again, this time slowly.

There was nothing much to see. The image of Sherlock was slumped in his desk chair, dozing sitting up, and then suddenly stood, trembled, put his hands to his face, and fell over.

Sherlock rewound again.

The image fell over with track marks. John moved closer to the image. Sleeping Sherlock, no marks. Collapsed Sherlock, massive black and red marks all up his arms. "What the hell happened?" John asked.

Sherlock rewound the scene again. "You know my methods. What do you think?"

"Well--you--did something take you? You can't have left, you're in no shape--something took you and brought you back to the same place and moment? And now you're looking for clues."

"By God, he's got it," Sherlock said emotionlessly. He played the image back in slow motion.

"You were abducted by aliens?"

"Don't be--" Sherlock started, but then he looked to one side. "Actually, yes. I was abducted by aliens."

John's phone beeped. He pulled the phone out and checked it automatically. So did Sherlock, with his own phone.

 _RUN_ , the message said.

Sherlock looked at him. "Run."

He switched the machine off. They ran.

"Where?" John asked. Sherlock shook his head. He took John's hand and they pelted along together.

John saw a flashy black SUV as Sherlock hissed and pulled him down an alley. They ducked into a building, up a flight of stairs, and through a furniture store. They ducked out onto a fire escape and from there to a roof. Sherlock pulled John down into the shadow of an air conditioner. They panted together, still clutching hands.

He could feel Sherlock's heartbeat pound in the base of his thumb, slightly faster than John's, so that they beat out of sync, then in, then out. John opened his mouth and Sherlock touched his finger to John's lips. Silence.

A door opened.

"We can see you," a woman's voice said. Welsh accent. John felt Sherlock's pulse skip and race. "We're Torchwood. We can do that."

Torchwood? Really? The actual Men In Black? John raised his eyebrows. Sherlock pressed his finger against John's lips again.

"No, honestly. You're just around there," the woman said, and she walked around the AC unit well out of arm's reach.

She carried a gun pointed at the ground. "We just want to talk," she said, "but I'm afraid it's not optional."

"No," Sherlock said.

She raised the gun. "Not optional."

Sherlock pressed John's hand so hard John felt his bones squeak. "I suppose we must, then."

John nodded, and when Sherlock stepped forward, out of the shadow, John kept going--he'd grab the gun, point it in a non-lethal direction, wrestle her, and Sherlock would get away--but Sherlock jerked him back, holding his hand in a grip like iron. "Don't."

"Ta," a man said. "I hate shooting people." Welsh again. John looked from him to her, then back to Sherlock, who was white as a ghost.

"Down the fire escape," the woman said. "Dr Watson first, so you can catch Mr Holmes if he falls. He doesn't look well. There's more of us at the bottom, so don't be clever."

Christ, they knew their names! "Tall order," John said. But Sherlock didn't react. He did look sick.

They walked toward the fire escape and John whispered: "What's wrong?"

"Torchwood," Sherlock replied. "I've been hiding from them for years. He's not a part of this," Sherlock said, raising his voice. "He's just my flatmate."

"The guns are just for emphasis," the Welsh man said. "Go on."

They climbed down, John first, Sherlock second. At the bottom were two gorgeous women standing to either side of the fire escape. Both armed as well, John was sure. He took Sherlock's cold hand.

The two women escorted them down the alley. The Welsh man and woman followed. At the mouth of the alley, the flashy black SUV was parked.

One of the women drove. John and Sherlock sat in the rearmost seat with the Welsh man. "Where are you taking us?" John asked.

"And will we ever be seen again?" Sherlock added.

"We're taking you out of the way while we clear up your nasty little collection," the Welsh man said.

Sherlock grimaced. "You can hide the evidence but not the truth, Ianto Jones."

"Hiding the evidence is enough."

"You're acquainted?" John asked.

"Never met, but I know who they are. That's Lois Habiba driving, Martha Jones beside her, and Gwen Cooper in the middle. Where's Mickey? Cleaning up my flat? And your boss?"

"The boss is waiting," Ianto said.

Sherlock looked out the window. "You're carrying a Lastian second gen stun gun that only looks like a pistol, but Cooper carries a real gun, because she was police," he muttered. "Habiba is never armed, why, but Mickey covers her, he's muscle, and this vehicle is outfitted with active anti-tracking mods but not for GPS, not for anything on Earth, you're not interested in that. Bigger fish to fry. Does UNIT know you kidnap people?"

"You came with us voluntarily," Ianto said. "You have nothing to threaten us with, Mr Holmes."

"Except that you can't do this to a citizen of a free country. But we haven't been free in some time." Sherlock still looked out the window.

“I’ll need your phones, of course,” Martha said, “Pass them up.”

John looked at Sherlock for guidance, but none was forthcoming. Sherlock’s gaze never left the passing scenery but he withdrew his cell phone from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it aloft. Ianto passed it forward. John leaned as far up as he could, his fingers brushing Martha’s as she received his phone. He said, “You can put your number in there, while you’re at it--Martha, is it?”

“I’ll be sure to do that, Dr Watson,” she replied blandly.

“Call me John.”

“No, thank you.”

Sherlock looked at him with murder in his eyes. John shrugged.

They drove for over an hour, a city-streets ramble that never exceeded posted speed limits. Once Sherlock and John had given up protesting, it was mostly silent. Now and again one of them would ask a question:

“So. . .the Melfean azure-wave indicator--where’d you find that one?”

“Been to Norway lately, Mr Holmes?”

“There was an online auction for a rather interesting piece of coral a few months back. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Regardless of the question, Sherlock’s answer was always the same. “Your boss knows.”

During an almost-twenty-minute lull, Sherlock—of all things--fell asleep. John took advantage of the opportunity to take his pulse (thready, over-quick) and feel his forehead (clammy). He shifted in his seat—a sudden motion that startled Ianto, who pointed his gun at John’s chest.

“All right, mate, just stretching the ol’ leg,” John said, making a gesture of surrender. He resettled into a posture that placed more of his own body between Sherlock and the rest of them. “Stiffens up on me in tight spaces.”

Ianto hummed skeptically but said nothing.

Martha Jones spoke up then, in her no-nonsense, command-presence tone. “Mr Holmes’ interesting response to stress reminds me,” she began. “Wonder if you’ve heard anything, Dr Watson, about an operation called Sleeping Rat?”

John shrugged slightly. “I’m retired.”

“Too bad,” Martha quipped. “I hear it’s about to get exciting.”

At last, they shoved them out of the SUV in front of their own flat. Sherlock had awoken several minutes earlier, but stepping onto the pavement he blinked as if waking from a dream. He leaned in through the still-open door.

“I thought you were taking me to see your boss.”

“We told you,” Gwen Cooper replied, reaching for the inside door handle, “He’s waiting.” She shut the door, causing Sherlock to stumble backward. John caught him by the elbow to steady him. Sherlock turned, doubled over, and vomited into the gutter.

*

The cane left behind when they fled Sherlock’s old flat was his better one. The one he was using now was hospital grade and made him feel like an old man. He spent a lot of time sitting, as a result. Well, that is, after he’d sorted the place; that Torchwood lot had positively ransacked it. He’d thought Sherlock might have been holding back tears when he saw what they’d done in his bedroom. There was a lot of noise and not a small amount of shouting from behind the closed door for the next few days.

He was finishing the washing up after tea—Sherlock left his empty cup, saucer, and plate of crumbs on the floor outside his room as if room service would be back around to pick it up—rinsing the spoons and setting them head-to-toe in the drainer so they wouldn’t nest together. He rinsed the last of the suds from the sink and wiped it dry with a kitchen towel.

“It’s fake.”

“Jesus! Is sneaking up the wisest thing to do to me, d’you suppose?”

“Your limp. You wanted me to think it was psychosomatic-fake, but it’s fake-fake.”

John didn’t turn around. Sherlock appeared beside him, near the dish-drainer.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Sherlock demanded. “You ran with me from my old flat.”

John raised a finger to his lips. “Shh.” He only mouthed the word. In a nearby drawer of junk (they were all junk drawers now; Sherlock’s mess was creeping like kudzu through the entire flat), John quickly located a small pad of stationery from an American motor lodge and a box of wooden matches. He reached into Sherlock’s shirt pocket and pulled out a fountain pen. He scribbled on the pad and showed it to Sherlock.

_Flat is bugged._

_I’m special ops._

He tore off the sheet from the pad, struck a match, lit the corner of the paper and dropped it into the sink.

He looked hard at Sherlock. “I’m sorry.“ He cleared his throat. “To break this to you, but I’m as surprised as you that I was able to run like that.” Writing again.

_They thought you’d be less distrustful of a cripple???_

Sherlock mugged disbelief, as if that were the stupidest hypothesis he’d ever heard. He dropped the note into the sink beside the first, watching to make sure it caught.

“Adrenaline,” John said, “Natural pain killer. I felt it later, that’s for sure.” He forced a chuckle.

Sherlock pointed to the burning pages. “Why?” he demanded.

John scribbled.

_I’m to observe you and await orders._

Sherlock grabbed back his pen from John. He underlined the word _orders_ and below it wrote, _TO KILL ME_.

“No,” John said immediately. Then he admitted, “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “But, no. That is absolutely not happening.”

Sherlock circled _orders_ again and again.

John took back the pen. He tore off the page, dropped it on the tiny conflagration in the sink. He wrote on the next page (the circles Sherlock had made were deeply etched), tore it out and held it up at Sherlock’s eye level.

_I’ve just decided I’m going rogue._

*

A few days later, John slipped a note under Sherlock’s door when he knocked to indicate tea and toast were waiting.

As expected, the door opened momentarily and Sherlock stood with mad hair and narrowed eyes and the note clutched in his hand on top of a stack of other papers. Christ, he’d covered the windows with aluminum foil.

John had anticipated having to justify the note’s contents. He held up a second note in front of his chest.

_What other reason would two men have to always be whispering to each other?_

Sherlock snatched the second note, pinched it together with the first, and tore them both into tiny shreds, which he threw at John like confetti.

Sherlock said, “Very well,” and shut the door in John’s face.

And so they became lovers.

*

“I don’t mind the mess. But I can’t tolerate it indefinitely.”

“M-hm.”

“So no cuddling. I’ll usually want a bath right after.”

“Fine.”

“Unless we start off in the bath.”

“M-hm.”

All this from Sherlock while John was moving inside him. Now he wanted to talk? His words stuttered out on heaving breath, trailed off, became louder, cracked sideways. . .but he kept on talking. John clamped his eyes shut. The bath--the shower—now there was a good idea. John’s back against the steamy tile, Sherlock on his knees, hair wet and slicked back from his face—

“I’ll probably ask you to. You know. Strangle me. But I know you’ll say no. And that’s--I can live with that. But you should know I’ll probably ask. In the moment.”

Please shut up.

“Oh,” John gasped, and his pelvis hitched. “Oh, you lovely--”

“Don’t call me that.”

In his sexual history, John had experienced orgasm tinged with any number of emotions: love, of course. But also anger, regret, gratitude. . .embarrassment, boredom, anxiety. . .fatigue. . .drunkenness. . .

“Oh, god!”

“Yes, I like that; call me that.”

It was his first ever exasperation-orgasm.

*

A case!

A locked, alarmed jewelry store, emptied of contents in the night. No video. No forced entry. No prints. Also, no excitement, because despite the fact that inside the locked safe was a woman’s severed hand wearing rings made of hard candy on every finger, it was not the exciting type of case. It was the type of case where Sherlock lay on the thrift-store sofa with his fingers tented against his chin and his feet in John’s lap, and stared at the ceiling.

The buzzer.

“Expecting someone?”

A negative grunt from Sherlock, who of course could not be bothered to move his own damned feet. John lifted Sherlock’s feet off his lap and rose, but before he’d even made it across the living room:

 “Good morning, gentlemen.” Mycroft Holmes, his chin tilted upward so he could literally look down his nose at them.

“Piss off. I’m on a case.”

“Yes, I can see that you are hard at work, as usual. Anything to report from the land of the little green men?”

Sherlock growled and shut his eyes.

“Have a seat,” John offered. “Tea?”

“I’m afraid I can’t stay. Merely making my appointed rounds to check up on the continued existence of my brother, which I see is confirmed. Sleeves, please.”

Sherlock obediently pushed up the sleeves of one of John’s jumpers (somehow too small and too large for him, both at once) and thrust his arms outward, wrists upturned. Mycroft scanned his gaze over the outstretched arms.

“Good. I’ll release your monthly allowance by end of business today.” He leaned a few inches closer and sniffed the air. “New cologne? It’s familiar but I can’t place it.”

“Am I free to go now?”

“Leather, tobacco, white tea. . .all synthetic. Cheap.” Mycroft’s face registered a mild a-ha and he pivoted toward John, who stood solidly nearby with crossed arms. John saw Mycroft’s nostrils flare.

“Do shut up, Mycroft, you insufferable twat,” Sherlock urged. He bounded up from the sofa and into his room, slamming the door behind him.

“On second thought, John, perhaps I will have that cup of tea.”

“Call me Dr Watson.”

“No, thank you.” Mycroft sat in what John had come to think of as his own chair.

“Sorry, I forgot. Kettle’s—you know—“ John glanced toward the kitchen. “Not interested in making you tea just now.” He shifted his stance, steady-shouldered, square to Mycroft.

“I won’t inquire as to the reason Sherlock is wearing your jumper and smelling of your after-shave, but instead will levy a warning—strictly off the record—that he is utterly incapable of having an appropriate relationship with any living person. Witness our interaction as brothers. And in the areas of friendship and romance, I’m afraid the data are thus far quite dire.”

John cleared his throat. “I don’t recall asking for your assessment.”

Mycroft cut his eyes toward Sherlock’s closed door, lowered his voice slightly. “Observations?”

“The Subject is a sickly anorexic with anemia who has substituted his former addiction to substances with an addiction to gathering questionable information about a probably-mythical, outer space superhero-character called The Doctor. He is moody to the point of near manic-depression, has no friends, colleagues, nor acquaintances--in fact can go days without speaking or interacting at all with another human being.”

Mycroft stage-yawned.

“He has a wound on his chest that never heals.”

Mycroft tilted his head.

“And until recently he had a regular appointment Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings to wank himself off.”

Mycroft looked as if he smelled the cheap after-shave anew. “It’s not like my brother to change his habits.”

“Well, now he lets me wank him off.”

Mycroft blanched, but he said steadily, “Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings.”

“Whenever I want,” John said. “Or, you know. . . there are other ways to get essentially the same result.” He shrugged.

“Thank you, John, that will do.” Mycroft reconfigured his face. “Orders?”

“I’m sure you’ll hear about them before I do.”

“There are some things even I am not privy to. It’s ‘need to know,’ and apparently I don’t.”

“I’m absolutely certain I don’t believe that.”

Mycroft rose from the chair, tugged his waistcoat down into place. “I notice you’re back to carrying your gun.” He cut a glance as if he could see around John to the pistol tucked into his rear waistband. “Be careful with that.” But he was looking toward Sherlock’s closed bedroom door as he said it.

John cleared his throat aggressively. “I’ll walk you out.”

Mycroft leaned close enough that John felt the hair just behind his ear stirring in the breeze of Mycroft’s breath. “Your superiors will not be pleased. Rule Number One: Don’t get involved.”

“Who says I have?”

Mycroft leaned away. He patted John’s cheek, and smirked.

*

“Lie still.”

“Your hands are freezing.”

John peeled the bandage back, expecting blood and pus, of which there was neither. He squinted.

“You’re sure. . .?” He extended one finger.

“Don’t touch it.” Sherlock lifted his head from John’s pillow to look down at it. “It doesn’t. . .It. . .”

John tilted his head nearly perpendicular to his neck.

“Just don’t touch it.”

“Well,” John said, leaning away a bit. “There’s no infection around it.”

“I know.”

“It looks just fine. Actually.” John smiled, despite himself. “It’s really quite. . .beautiful.”

“I know,” Sherlock agreed. “But cover it.” He passed John a fresh bandage.

*

John was in a phone box in Splott. Sherlock was down an alley, up a fire escape, on a roof, wearing goggles.

“What are my orders?”

“They’re forthcoming. Just wait. Did someone ask you to report?”

“Torchwood kidnapped me; that sure as hell wasn’t in my briefing.”

“It’s need to know.”

From above, distantly, Sherlock: “John! I need more hands.”

“Yes, it’s need to know. And I need to fucking know.”

“We neither confirm nor deny the existence of the Torchwood Institute or related subsidiaries.”

“For god’s sake! Before it gets away!”

“Well Torchwood need to know this: If they come near me or The Subject again, I’m going to terminate them.”

“We neither confirm nor deny—“

“ _Terminate_ them. Think hard about whether it sounds like I’m joking.”

“John! Now!”

He hung up.

“Coming!. . .make more noise why don’t you?”

*

“Your collection was real. Torchwood is real,” John said, eyes scanning the array of photos and notes Sherlock had spread across the bed (John’s, so they could talk without being overheard. John had disabled the listening device there, reckoning if it was ruinous to the operation, he’d hear about it one way or another. But it had been weeks and he’d heard nothing.) “And you.” He looked into Sherlock’s expectant face. “I believe in you.” John shrugged. “I believe you.”

Sherlock exhaled a held breath.

“So that Harold Saxon. . .” John began. “He was really a Time Lord, like the Doctor?”

“Yes, he’s called the Master.”

John sucked his teeth. “Wouldn’t have voted for him had I known that.”

“Mm.”

“Anyway,” John went on, “As I remember it, Saxon and the US president, Winters, made these big announcements about First Contact, and we all waited up all night with held breath for it, but it never happened. Next morning, there was just this anti-climatic nothing. Winters went AWOL and the congress impeached him in absentia; Saxon—“

“Committed suicide. They said.” Sherlock held a photo of a skinny, freckled man in 3D glasses and a New Wave hairdo. “It’s what the world remembers, but it’s not what happened.”

“What, like an alternate timeline? Every decision creates a separate reality?” John’s neck felt hot; he let go a laugh. “This feels like one of those discussions you have in university housing at 2am after ingesting magic mushrooms. . .alternate realities and, ooh, I know: what if the prime minister was an alien?”

Sherlock looked furious, started to gather up the papers. “The prime minister _was_ an alien,” he scolded.

John grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t go off in a huff, now. I said I believe you.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“I’m not. I promise I’m not.”

Sherlock sized him up through narrowed eyes.

“When’s the last time you slept?”

“I don’t know. What day is it today?”

“Sherlock. . .”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Which could be very soon. So let me finish.” He pointed to the photo again. “This was the Doctor, then. He looks different now.”

“Because of the regeneration.”

“Here’s Saxon, of course. He was. . .” Sherlock looked up and away. “Hypnotic.”

“Well. _You_ have a type.”

“Meaning?”

John snatched the photo from Sherlock’s hand, held it up. “Don’t you think?” He pointed back and forth from the photo to his own face.

“I don’t see it.” Sherlock plucked the photo from John’s hand. “And that’s exactly what it was, a kind of hypnosis; mind control through that Archangel Network.”

“They gave us free Archangel phones—the army. Everyone in government got them for free.”

“It’s how he made us trust him. It’s how the Doctor didn’t recognize him. There was a subliminal frequency, lulling us all into submission.”

John wanted to joke again— _Wake up, Sheeple!_ —but thought better of it.

“Mycroft—“ Sherlock bit the inside of his lips, started again. “It was arranged that I would do some contract work—maps, demographics, endless calculations, statistics, computer modeling. . .”

“Sounds dreadful.”

“Mind control,” Sherlock reminded him. “Some of it was interesting. I spent quite a bit of time trying to decipher what it would be used for. But, as ever, it was need to know, and I only ever saw my own carefully selected piece of the puzzle.”

“Wait, ‘it was arranged’? Is that when you were abducted?”

“Yes, that’s when I was abducted.”

“This Saxon fella wanted a heroin addict doing his statistics?”

“Mycroft thought it would set me on the straight and narrow path, a government job. But, yes, in the end, it turned out that a heroin addict was exactly what Saxon wanted. Maybe not at first, but later, he used it to his advantage.” Sherlock opened a small photo album and flipped to a photo of what John assumed to be an American soap opera actor, all white teeth and dimpled chin and dear god he was gorgeous.

“This is Captain Jack Harkness. He’s the founder and current commander at the reconfigured Torchwood. The boss.”

*

“Sherlock? I’m coming in. Sorry. It can’t wait.”

John lifted the toilet lid and unzipped. “Just, you know, sing or whatever. You’ve been in here forever.” He let out a great sigh of relief.

The shower curtain wafted slightly; steam rose above the curtain rod. John noticed as he stood there that the pitch and pattern of the water falling from the shower head didn’t vary—no splashing, no interruptions as with a body moving about beneath the spray.

John finished, shook, zipped up. “You all right in there?”

Faint noise like a gasp, then another. Then another. . .a sigh. . .more huffing gasps.

John grinned. Sunday morning. “Ah. . .well in that case, let me give you a hand?” He pulled back the curtain.

Sherlock was crumpled in a heap in the tub, arms around his knees, head tilted upward, face distorted into a mummer’s mask of tragedy. He sobbed, then tried to hide.

“Jesus, I thought you were—“ John turned off the taps, yanked a towel off the shelf and tossed it over Sherlock like a blanket. “What can I do?” He grasped Sherlock’s bare shoulder—gooseflesh was rising on his arm—petted him.

“I was only doing maths!” Sherlock moaned; his whole body shuddered with a staccato series of caught breaths. “And my stupid pride. . .”

John whispered, “Shh. . .you’re all right.”

“I thought I couldn’t be fooled.”

“Hush now. Let’s get you out of here, you’re shivering.”

Sherlock looked at him. “Did you kill anyone? In the war?”

John gave up tugging at Sherlock for the moment. His shoulders dropped.

“Yes, of course. I had to.”

“Up close?”

John busied his hands patting Sherlock’s hair with a corner of the towel. “Sometimes. Yes.”

Sherlock looked away from John, a thousand-yard stare into the distance. “Imagine each of them came back and begged you not to do it again.”

“Come on, we’re getting you out of here.”

Sherlock let himself be guided to stand and patted dry, impassive as an ill child. His bandage was off. And. . .was it humming? Almost. But no, not humming. It was more like. . . It was singing.

“I don’t know what he’s waiting for.”

“Who?” He guided Sherlock into his bedroom, shoved aside three open books and a cribbage board with far too many pegs stuck in it.

“Torchwood. They know where I am. They know me.”

“Lie down, now.” He tucked the blankets around Sherlock’s pale, nude body, then lay down beside him, leg over Sherlock’s legs, arm across Sherlock’s belly, forehead against Sherlock’s temple. “Torchwood wouldn’t dare.” He made sure his voice sounded convinced. “I’m here to protect you.” Not entirely a lie.

“If I tell you what I did—“

“Shh.” Lips against Sherlock’s ear.  It was like embracing a wooden plank; he waited for Sherlock to soften, but he never did. “You don’t have to tell me. I don’t need to know.”

Sherlock, plainly: “I wish I could kill myself.”

*

“The Subject is unraveling. I need to know my orders.”

“Your orders as of today, Captain, are to stop calling and demanding to know your orders.”

“Send in a replacement. I’m finished.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“I quit. I’m done. I. . .” he fumbled. “I have doubts as to. . .” He kicked the phone box. “The Subject’s sanity is. . .questionable.”

“You are to observe and await orders. The operation is not finished. You are still in play.”

“I’m fucking _not_!” John shouted. “Send in some other yoke to observe and await.”

“Captain, I repeat: the operation is not finished. You are in play.”

The line died. John smashed and smashed the handset against the wall of the box until it broke in half.

*

“This? This is the boss who’s waiting?”

Sherlock nodded. John noticed Sherlock barely looked at the photo.

“Another thing you won’t believe.”

“Sherlock, I believe you.”

“He can’t die.” John swallowed and said nothing. “Saxon imprisoned him; he was working with the Doctor. Well, I misspoke. He can die; he just won’t stay dead. He comes back.”

“The regeneration thing again?” John asked.

“No. Same body, same face, same man. He just. . .persists. My work with the statistics was finished once Saxon’s alien army was deployed.” Sherlock gestured to a detailed hand-drawing he’d made of a pretty basketball with lasers and knives sticking out all over. “The Toclafane, he called them, but they were his own creation.” Sherlock let out a shuddering sigh. “Six hundred million, in just the first day.”

“Do you need to rest?” John asked, but Sherlock shook his head. John reached for his hand and held it.

“I was reassigned.” It seemed as if he had finished talking. John waited.

After a moment John said quietly, “I don’t need to know.”

Sherlock lifted his head and spoke to the ceiling. “Saxon was too busy to think up new ways to kill Harkness every single day.”

John stroked his thumb over the back of Sherlock’s hand.

“At first it was just theoretical, and of course my addiction was a house afire by that time. I produced a suggestion; I got my packet of heroin. But then Saxon wanted me there with him while he enacted my scenarios— _Oh,_ _you lovely murder artiste_ —he thought he was rewarding me.”

_(“Oh, you lovely—“ “Don’t call me that.”)_

“And then.” Another endless pause. “Soon enough Saxon got too busy to kill Harkness every single day, even without having to decide the method. The longest I could go without a fix was about 36 hours. I swear I tried.”

“Jesus.” He couldn’t help it.

_(“Imagine each one came back and begged you not to do it again.”)_

“Freezing, starving, forcefeeding, drowning, stabbing, flaying, quartering. . .” Sherlock intoned, trance-like. “Burning, of course, with fire, and with several types of corrosives.”

John bit the inside of his cheek. Sherlock withdrew his hand from John’s and started to gather up the papers into a folder. His tone changed suddenly to all-business, summing up.

“You have that Martha Jones to thank; she went on walkabout, telling everyone who was left alive about the Doctor. And the Archangel Network was subverted in order to foil the Master’s plan for a universal empire. Time spun backwards, and it was as if that year never happened. His insane bitch wife shot him.”

“But—“

“He refused to regenerate, died in the Doctor’s arms. Broke the Doctor’s hearts. Now he really is the last of the Time Lords.”

John closed his eyes. His head hurt.

Sherlock had arranged the papers neatly into his folder. He stood.

“Before the wife killed Saxon, though. . . The Doctor forgave him.”

“Forgave him?!” John huffed out a laugh.

“The Doctor is very _good_ ,” Sherlock said, contorting his face into a simpering impression of the Very Good Doctor. “He forgave everything. He’s so filled with compassion there’s a sect in the Himalayas who revere him as a Buddha.”

John rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and fingertips. “So. You want to find the Doctor.”

“Yes.”

“So he’ll forgive you?”

Sherlock looked bewildered; clearly that idea had never occurred to him, then his face darkened in a way John had not seen before.

“No. So I can kill him.”

*

Another morning, naked and entangled in John’s bed.

“Who knows about it?”

“Torchwood. Or, at least, Harkness.”

“Your brother?”

Sherlock laid his hand on his chest as if quieting it.

“I don’t think so. Maybe. Probably.”

“You said you wished you could—“ he couldn’t finish. “It won’t let you?”

Sherlock nodded.

“Then it’s good,” John said. “It’s good.”

*

Sherlock had a patchwork quilt wrapped around his head like a babushka, holding it tight in one hand beneath his chin. His eyes were huge.

John’s hand moved between their two bodies, coaxed Sherlock’s fingers away from the hem of the blanket. He held Sherlock’s hand against his own chest.

“I can’t tell you how long afterwards I kept up telling myself the whole thing was a drugs-induced hallucination. Months.”

John tipped his chin, kissed Sherlock’s knuckle. Sherlock seemed not to notice.

“Then, when I knew it was real, I wanted to obliterate it.”

“So you took everything.”

“ _Everything_.”

“And?”

Sherlock’s face was drifting away from an expression of wide-eyed, post-stress panic (John had seen those big eyes countless times: in the faces of men in the surgical recovery ward, retelling what had brought them there limbless, gutshot, with ringing ears or bruised brains). Now Sherlock looked overcome with fatigue, a sadness like regret.

“Somehow it didn’t kill me.” Sherlock’s hand moved in his; he was holding John’s hand in return, which was new. “And once penance fails, all that is left is to repent.”

“So, the police work.”

“It’s not a crime I’ve been working off. It’s only shame.”

*

John’s orders came as a text message on the burner phone he’d been issued.

_STAND DOWN IMMEDIATELY._

Like fuck he would. He tossed the phone in a bin on the Marylebone Road. They would have to take him out of that flat feet-first. Just let them try to send in some other yoke, now.

*

Cardiff again. Sherlock shinnied down a sewer—shouldn’t these things be locked up somehow? Terrorism and all that?—and John waited next to the bins behind a coffee shop, trying not to step into puddles of rubbish-juice. He should have learned by now to wear his old trainers.

The sewer lid jittered and started to slide sideways. But it was not Sherlock’s head that emerged.

Seven minutes later, they were ducking into a rented car (third of five for the round trip; Sherlock drove like the countryside was his personal F1 track), both of them out of breath from sprinting.

“I tried to warn them not to come near you. Us.”

Sherlock looked grim, checked the rearview as he peeled out.

“Anyway, Cooper will survive it, if they get to her in time. Harkness was dead.”

“For now. You know he’s going to kill me eventually.” Sherlock cut a sidelong glance toward John, his gun in his hand still too warm to tuck back into his waistband. “Quite right, too. He deserves retribution.”

“I will kill Harkness a thousand times before I will let him touch a single hair on your head.”

John felt calmer than he had in months. Positively serene. He could see heat ripple up off the road ahead of them; the thing in the back seat was throwing off cold air far better than the car’s AC unit could have.

Sherlock grinned. “Well now, Dr Watson. You really _have_ gone rogue.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” He leaned across and kissed Sherlock’s neck until he swerved.

 

 

-END-

 

**Author's Note:**

> From PoppyAlexander -xoxo-
> 
> My brilliant, long-time friend Basingstoke writes stories full of delightful weirdness and, unfailingly, an underlying sense of the great fun that can be had when one considers “What if. . .?” Her writing style often keeps the reader off-balance in the way that carnival rides do, revealing just enough of what’s ahead to make the reader want to buckle up and hang on rather than bail out, because whatever’s coming you just know is going to be good, something you never expected to find, and it will undoubtedly make you smile. "I never thought of that!"
> 
> I discovered the first 4500ish words of “Acid,” when Basingstoke published a clearinghouse of abandoned works-in-progress. Here again: the sense of wanting to know what’s coming, trying to guess, knowing the guesses are probably wrong. I was distressed when it “ended” without an ending! Several weeks later, I had just finished (?) a huge series of my own “Sherlock” stories and was looking for other things to write, and I went back to read “Acid,” again. I asked Bas if I could finish it and she graciously agreed.
> 
> Basingstoke’s Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are decidedly not “my” Sherlock and John, which was the first challenge before me as I began to “write” (half a week’s daydreaming, no actual writing) the ending to her story. I have written 100,000+ words in roughly 15 stories about “my” Sherlock and John, so letting them go was a little scary, but also a tantalizing taste of freedom. I wanted to leave Basingstoke’s first half of the story essentially unchanged (I made extremely minor changes such as at one point changing, “pulled away,” to “stalked away,” just to get Sherlock out of the room; and to Bas’s original work, I think I added only about three dozen words). And in attempting to maintain her unique, quirky author’s voice throughout the story, I found myself reining in my own rather florid style to better match her work. This was not only a fun challenge for me as a writer, but the voice combined with the content allowed me the freedom to write things I would really never have written otherwise (all the scenes about Sherlock’s bandage, for instance, are pretty much me channeling Basingstoke; they are unlike anything I have ever written). What a treat!
> 
> I hope that if you are the type of reader who will try to find the breaking point—that point in the story at which Basingstoke’s work ends and mine begins—you will have a real challenge before you. But for the curious: The first words I wrote were, “I’ll need your phones, of course,” spoken by Martha Jones in the Torchwood SUV. Everything (aside from my extremely minor tweaks to match plot points I introduced later) before that point is Bas’s work; everything after it is mine.  
> I hope you had a fun ride on this story. . .I know I did. Thanks for reading.


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